"Then the sea does nothing at all"

 

"One evening I went down to our live-box to get

some fish for the cat and dropped my knife in

the water, which made me think about what the

island looked like down there where it started

- maybe a broad base that lost itself in the long,

deserted ocean floor - less and less seaweed, more

and more darkness, absolute silence…"

 

"And she notes that you never know with the

weather. Suddenly the sea level rises - clearly

strong wind coming. The sea sinks catastrophically

- there will be a storm. Then the sea does nothing

at all, and pretty soon the wind’s blowing your ears

off. She adds that in fact all the facts and statistics

are idiotic, because the sea does precisely whatever

it wants.

[…] At the end of her notebook Ham wrote,

underlined, “We must not gild the lily.” Yes, yes,

I know, probably from the Bible. And I know

exactly what she meant - that we’ve tried to make

the meadow into a garden, change the thicket into

a park, tame the shore with a dock, and all the

other things we’ve undeniably done wrong."

—Notes from an island

Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietilä